Speakers

Greg McKeown, Eve Rodsky


Transcript

Greg McKeown  

It’s absolutely fantastic to be with you, Eve, Eve Rodsky, author of Fairplay. Super important book, key part of a conversation for being able to create Essentialism in your home with your partner, if there’s challenges in trying to work out who should be doing what, this is for you. But Eve is also fascinating player in a world beyond this book, but in working with some fascinating, highly complex families is part of her background and expertise. And so, whatever your family looks like, whatever the complexities are, whatever the challenges are, if you want to try and make your life more equal, more balanced, more fair, more Essentialist. Eve is here to help us. Welcome to the show.

Eve Rodsky  

Thank you, Greg. I’m just laughing because yes, my day job is working with highly complex families. So, I appreciate you giving me that lens as well. Because that’s sort of where Fairplay was originated. But I don’t get to talk about that a lot.

Greg McKeown  

What can you tell us about that? I don’t mean any specific family’s names, of course. But just what can you tell us to give us that context and expertise that brought you to this subject?

Eve Rodsky  

Well, I’ll say that this journey started from Fairplay, you know, and I’m going to assume that your listeners have not read it. And if they have, they’ve heard the story because it’s the intro. But this book, Fairplay started with a text that my husband Seth sent me after our second son Ben was born. And that text just said, I’m surprised you didn’t get blueberries. So probably a very innocuous text from him, but one that had me sobbing on the side of the road thinking to myself, well, first, I was thinking that if my marriage is going to end, Greg that it should be over like my affair with an NFL player or something way more dramatic, but it started with this very cliched argument over my need to be my husband’s fulfiller of his smoothie needs. That day is really important because it was a day that I thought to myself, I used to be able to manage employee teams. And we’ll talk a little bit about my day job as a philanthropic advisor. But now I can’t even manage a grocery list. But more importantly, I was thinking about that day, I don’t have the career and marriage combo I thought I was going to have and this gets back to my love of Essentialism. And what would it look like to get there? So, when I started to look at the imbalance in my household, why I considered myself the default or as I call him in Fairplay, the she-fault for literally every single household and domestic tasks for my family. I thought, Well, why don’t I bring in my discipline, you know, my work as a family mediator and a family lawyer for highly complex families that look like the HBO show Succession. So, you should feel bad for me because it is difficult work. But I will say the lens that gives me Greg is that, you know, I walk into a family where I’m tasked with bringing the next generation on for the succession of a family business, or a family foundation. These are very, very highly complex, very wealthy individuals. And I come into a place where the patriarch or the matriarch says to me things like, Well, I’m not sure why we need you because I’m not going to die.

Greg McKeown  

Really?

Eve Rodsky     

I’ve had many times that’s happened to me where the matriarch or the patriarch say their family offices brought me in, you know, they’re paying me really good money to work on their systems and their bylaws and all of the communication tools it takes to empower the next generation to take over without a coup your family business or your family foundation, and yeah, so many of them said to me, Well, I’m not going to die so we don’t I don’t need you.

Greg McKeown   

So, they just in denial, because they have been able to achieve so many things in their life and they’re so focused on that. They just aren’t even willing to accept the possibility that you know that their days are numbered.

Eve Rodsky     

Well, yes. And also, I think what it does for me is it really taught me the power of mediation tools, because Fairplays not only a book, but it has 100 cards that come with it that you can download on Fairplay Life. And we’ll talk about the power of those cards. But as a mediator, I’ve often use cards like actual physical cards as a way into a very difficult conversation. So, for those jerks and matriarchs, I have these legacy cards that were developed by this mediation group I’m part of, because there’s not that many of us who do this work, and we say like here, okay, you’re not going to die. So how about Instead, let’s lay out all these cards. And let’s picture your legacy. Does it look like a balloon? Does it look like a newspaper? Does it look like a Beach? And then oftentimes I get patriarch or matriarch talking. Like one man, when we use these cards, one of my clients said to me, actually, I want to talk about that newspaper because I had a newspaper route as a child. And that’s how I ended up in media. And that’s how I ended up buying media companies, because I was obsessed with my newspaper route. And it’s how I earned my first dollar. So that’s how getting people to communicate. Sometimes it takes something as simple as analog cards as a mediation tool.

Greg McKeown   

So, what you’re saying is that these cards allow a conversation to take place.

Eve Rodsky     

They’re cheaper than a couple therapists in Fairplay, but for me what they allow almost like a third party in the room where you can break the ice in a way that’s less triggering. I find that having tools to have difficult values conversations, to have difficult conversations about your legacy can be really helpful because it’s much easier to say my legacy looks like a newspaper than it is to say I’m gonna die and who’s going to take over my business that I work so hard to create. For 10 year I’ve been using tools, lots of different tools to elicit hard conversations.

Greg McKeown     

What other tools have you used in these high stakes, highly complex families?

Eve Rodsky     

That’s a good question. A lot of my tools come down to what you say a lot, Greg, which is getting to what the core of what people value, sometimes I will do my rapid fire, where I’ll just have word association. So, I’ll bring words to the table like legacy, just one word, fortune, one word, love one word. And I’ll start getting sort of a rapid fire out to my clients to start helping them craft what their legacy really is, and what does it look like? Oftentimes, what I like to say, and again, it’s why I love your work so much, is that we’re focused on the wrong things. And so, if you’re going to focus on a conversation around who’s taking over or are you know, my kids are worthless, and they’ve never done anything in their life. And so how are we gonna do this fairly or one of my children is the one I want to take over the family business and the other ones, I want them involved in the foundation, but that’s not equal, then we can get off on a really wrong path. If you back it up into what you value. What do you value as a family? What have you done your whole life that has inspired you? Right? You bring it back to those values conversations, which people are not used to having, but they’re actually the most important conversations. And that’s exactly what happens in the home too, Greg. We’re fighting over all the small details right they’re causing the biggest problem so I have people all over this country saying things to me because I interviewed 500 men and women for Fairplay that mirror the US Census. And what they’re saying to me are things like I got divorced because my husband kept leaving beard shavings in the sink. One man told me he’s locked out of his house over a glue stick. I have a woman who a COO of is a publicly traded accompany when I asked her the vague question of what’s the hardest challenge in her life. She said to me, it’s getting her husband to remember to take out the kitty litter. A lot of my work in translating as a mediator in my day job and this is why it was very helpful to Fairplay was understanding that the presenting problem whether it’s presenting a sobbing in the car over offseason blueberries, or divorcing over beard shavings, the presenting problem is never the real problem. And so, I think that what this is all comes down to is that lens has always helped me because for over a decade, I’ve been working with that lens. I’ve been trained. I’m a Harvard trained mediator and lawyer, I’m trained to understand that the presenting problem is never the real problem.

Greg McKeown     

You distrust the first symptom. And you also which I think is interesting, don’t want to go there. Because that’s where it’s hypersensitive right now. It’s, This is where It’s supercharged, if you try to have a conversation directly there. Literally, I suspect people just either cannot do it or it’s super ugly if they do.

Eve Rodsky  

Absolutely. I think you’re hitting the nail on the head. And so, what I’m here to say my biggest finding, I think right now is nobody invest in communication, right? It’s we need to invest in communication, the way we’re investing in toilet paper, that makes me really sad. It’s very similar, like I said, to my day job. So just go back to one more example of my day job as a mediator, these highly complex families, one family I worked with in Seattle. When I first came in for the engagement. The

patriarch said to me, Well, we don’t communicate about our family business. In the board meetings, we’re not really communicating, we just, you know, do our thing, which is go to the business at hand, and I said, Okay, that’s fine. So, I sat in on the first meeting with his family in Seattle. And what I noticed was that every time my clients second son would speak, my client walked out of the room. Just got up and walked out whether it was for water, or to go to the bathroom. But what I what I’m here to say because this translates to couples or anybody who’s looking for domestic rebounds, even roommates is that you are already communicating. And that’s probably the number one tenant that I come in to share with my clients. If anybody takes away anything from today, it’s that we are already communicating about, you know, our family, businesses and my day job but really about our domestic lives. Fairplay is about a communication shift and not a communication start. And I think once I say that there’s a lot more willingness to engage.

Greg McKeown  

Yes, I love that you’re saying that people cannot not communicate?

Eve Rodsky  

Correct? Exactly.

Greg McKeown  

So therefore, as soon as you say that you take responsibility for the fact that you’re already communicating, probably not very well.

Eve Rodsky  

Correct. Again, what was allowed me to inform Fairplay because I come at this not as a psychologist, even though I have psychologists who have read the book, you know, obviously, and are interviewed and I’m not a behavioral economist, even though I have that. My lens is this mediation lens, it’s a lens of family systems. And that’s why I said I love Essentialism so much because it also talks about how when you take agency in your own life, to understand that you can design your life. You can’t always obviously control all the factors of your life, but you can make intentional decisions that make things better. But I think it has to come from the fact that you’re you understand your why and what you value. And also understand that you’re already communicating. I wonder if you’ll play a game with me. Will you play a little game with me? 

Greg McKeown

Yes. 

Eve Rodsky  

Okay. This is gonna ask you to be a little vulnerable. I think it’d be fun. Since we’re talking, we launched into communication, which I think is really helpful for your listeners. I like to play a reverse Newlywed Game. So, your wife is named Anna. Is that her name? 

Greg McKeown

Yep. 

Eve Rodsky  

Okay, cuz I that’s my daughter’s name. So that’s how I remember her name.

Greg McKeown

I have a daughter called Eve.

Eve Rodsky   

You do? Well, that’s funny.

Greg McKeown     

We’re related by rumor now.

Eve Rodsky     

We’re related by palindromes.

Greg McKeown  

Yes. 

Eve Rodsky  

So, I want to read you the top seven vulnerabilities. The top seven vulnerabilities I found from families over a decade of working with them that I witness in my family mediation practice. So I’m going to read you all seven and I want to know what you think Anna would say about you?

Greg McKeown   

Yep. 

Eve Rodsky     

Okay. One long winded wah wah wah, you’re talking and no one’s listening. Two,sharp command sir your tone and drill sergeant delivery isn’t popular with the troops. This is when things are you know your heated whatever. Three, bad timing, you drop your grievances and requests for help into the conversation at inopportune moments. Four, toxic word choice. I wasn’t going to say anything but I really hate it when you dot dot dot. Five all or nothing, you never bla bla bla you are Blah, blah, blah. Six dredging up the past, this is just like the last time you forgot dot dot dot. Or seven, boiling over. I wasn’t going to say anything. I avoided this conversation as long as I could. I didn’t say anything. But now I’m really pissed. So, I’ll do all seven, again, one long winded two your bad tone, sharp commands, three bad timing. Four toxic word choice. Five, all or nothing. Six dredging up the past, or Seven boiling over in a time of stress. What would Anna say is your vulnerability?

Greg McKeown       

Well, I mean, I have two answers to that first always like all of them. You know, like, no mistake there. I haven’t made. I think the most common thing I just got to be guilty of is being long winded. You know, I just love ideas, and I’m passionate about what I do. And so, and she’s a great empathic listener. And so, it’s easy for me to share thinking we’re just having a conversation. But actually, she’s serving me. And I get, we’ll be half an hour in or longer and certainly early in our marriage, it could be much longer than that. And then I realized, oh, I’ve just exhausted her.Number two, sharp commands with my children. If I’m trying to get them to tidy up or clean-up for me, that’s particularly one to me. Bit of a neat freak that way and so positive is you can get the moving and you you know, you just get on with it. But I think sharp command, bad timing, could think about what that really meant, you know, just bringing up a grievance at a bad time. Is that is that the idea?

Eve Rodsky     

Yeah, exactly. I do that all the time. I say to Seth, like I’m ready to talk about the day tomorrow. He’s asleep, just shaking him awake. And he’s like, What are you doing? I’m sleeping like that, that. That’d be my bad timing.

Greg McKeown   

Yeah, I mean, I would say for the other ones just looking trying to look at the list in front of me, I would say the rest of them happen if there’s an argument going on. So, if we get into something, then the typical way of communicating the respectfulness that I think is far more the norm than otherwise, they get, I’m amazed at how quickly those things can slip out. And these other ways of communicating, move in. 

Eve Rodsky

Yeah. 

Greg McKeown

And I think the reason is because when you’re so close to each other, and you know each other so well in You are so vulnerable to each other. So as soon as you start giving to the other person, a sort of negative version of yourself because you feel a bit defensive and then they’re going to be more defensive. And then, of course, anything they say will then hurt you and vice versa. And so, the whole thing can escalate really quickly. And so, I think that’s where bad timing, toxic word choice, all or nothing thinking dredging up the past boiling over all of that can be present there.

Eve Rodsky     

Absolutely. And I think you’re hitting such an important point. First of all, as a man, just you being vulnerable enough to admit to vulnerabilities, is, I think, really important. And I think hopefully your listeners will, you know, get the courage to do that from you. But I think what’s so important about what you’re saying is that, especially during this time when you know, space time continuum is collapsing on us. And this again, gets back to my mediation practice. One of the things that I really try to instill in my clients is this idea that when emotion is high, cognition is low.

Greg McKeown

Right.

Eve Rodsky

And when emotion is high, cognition is low, and obviously you don’t just have to take that for me. I spent about 20 pages in Fairplay explaining that from all the disciplines, right neuroscience, psychology, behavioral economics, law, which is my discipline, obviously. But I think it’s really interesting now because my emotion is high and cognition is low a lot, because my children are around. And I noticed that it’s almost very rare that when my children are around, my emotion is not high. 

Greg McKeown

Mm hmm. 

Eve Rodsky

And so, I think what I would say to your listeners, right, and to all of us who have those vulnerabilities, is that if we could recognize that one, we’re already communicating. Step two is understanding your vulnerability. And if your vulnerabilities, any of the ones you just talked about, other than longwinded ness, it’s really, probably like you said, coming from a time when you’re already speaking to each other, when that emotion is high, and that cognition is low. So, what a core tenant of Fairplay is about is this idea of waiting for it. It is the hardest thing in the practice for my family. Dozens of beta testers they say it’s the hardest thing. But the most valuable thing is the idea of writing down what you need to say and waiting for it to invest in your communication. When emotion is low and cognition is high, and that requires a practice, Greg, it requires coming to the table, Seth and I come to the table, 10 minutes a night, we set a timer, because Seth can also be long winded. So, we set a timer and we do 10 minutes and then we get through whatever we get through to the timer, you know, beeps we bring alcohol or ice cream. Short term reward substitution is what we call it. And that’s it. But to me, it’s those three steps, those very easy steps that you can that you know anybody listening to this can start with which is investing in a practice of communication by starting to understand what your vulnerability is. Holding that feedback and then waiting to come back to the table when emotion is low, and cognition is high.

Greg McKeown   

So, in that 10 minutes, I love that this little. A friend of mine calls them a microburst. 

Eve Rodsky

10 minutes, that’s it.

Greg McKeown

What’s the order? Talk me through what to do in that microburst?

Eve Rodsky     

Absolutely. I think it’s better to do it through a story. So, this couple reported back to me because again, I have a lot of Fairplay testers, a lot of people using the system, like Essentialism, right, people take different pieces of it. But I have a whole set of beta testers who really did report back to me with almost sociologic feedback, very rigorous feedback. And one of those couples said to me recently, they’re like, we want to tell you a story. I said, Okay, tell me the story. They said, We had a situation recently I said, Okay, what’s your situation? She said, Well, my husband, Eric, he was holding the grocery card. So, we’ll talk more about how you use the mediation tool of the of the Fairplay cards later. But it’s the business principle of the directly responsible individual or context, not control. It’s giving someone autonomy. So, her husband Eric, he holds the grocery card. He goes to Trader Joe’s and Ralph twice a week, he surveys that household for what they need. So, he’s doing a great job on that. He comes in, she says that she screams. I have a low voice so I can’t get that high, but she’s washed her hands. I can’t get to that piercing tone as she describes it. But basically, her tone was so piercing back to the sharp commands, that Eric dropped the groceries and walked away as he walked into the house, and she was so upset because he broke the eggs. And she said her family right now is living on banana bread and scrambled eggs. And he’s watching all these cracked eggs in the bag getting all over the rest of the groceries. And she’s in tears. And she’s shaking. And so, what she said was so fair play was that she didn’t go to him and escalate that conversation. She waited till their check-in because they’re used to that practice because they’ve been playing Fairplay. So they talk to each other that night. So this is a typical 10 minute checkup. They sit down. She says to him, I’m sorry about my tone. I totally messed up. So first she’s acknowledging her tone, her vulnerability. And then she goes to the most important part of what Fairplays about, which is why again, it’s it works so well with Essentialism, which is what is your why? 

Greg McKeown

Yeah. 

Eve Rodsky

So in this situation, she’s trained to go to her why. So, she says to me, she sits down at their check in, which is a night and she says, I want to let you know, my mental health is hanging on by a string. I’m having a really, really hard time right now. I can’t control anything during this really intense period of us being all locked down together. And so, when you sing the Happy Birthday song and wash your hands in front of me, as opposed to just walking in with the groceries and starting to put things away, you’re investing in my mental health, which is cheaper than therapists which is good because we’re trying to save money. And that’s really, really helpful to me. And then she said Eric said to her, I keep Purell in my pocket. I wear gloves to the store. I wasn’t just putting the groceries away. I’d Purell my hands before I walked in. And what was so beautiful Greg, what she said that was it. She said in the past, those conversations would have lingered for days or weeks or turned into those avoidant conversations that boil over. But she was like, okay, we’re done here. And it was over. And so, I think that’s, to me, the whole encapsulation of those rules of acknowledging your vulnerability, waiting for when emotion is low, and cognition is high when you can come to the table. And then, of course, the most important tenet that we haven’t talked about yet, which is really Essentialistic is the idea of starting with your why. Eric, understanding her why was the most beautiful part of that story for me.

Greg McKeown     

Well, and one of the things I love about what you’re saying is with this, starting with your why begs its own story. When I’ve taught people how to just really start on their Essentialist journey. I will have them identify one thing that’s Essential that they’re underinvesting in, I’ll have them write down why that thing matters so much to them. And then there’s a variety of other steps. What they have when they’ve done this process of, let’s say, a half an hour process, they don’t know that it’s a script, but they’ve got a script. Because then what I’d say is, okay, well, you’re going to call that person right now, you know, in a have a conversation, they’ve identified a accountability partner, somebody that they’re going to talk to about this change, they want to make this new investment, they want to make it something that really matters to them, so that they’re, it’s easier for them to actually follow through. Okay, this is the exercise before they actually go out and make that phone call right there. We’re going to take a break, everyone’s going to do it. I have them you know, a few people roleplay it and what’s 100% not even 95% true 100% of the time when they stand up there to explain you know, to pre have the conversation they’re about to have on the phone. They follow every step in front of them. But they just skip the Why every single time. 

Eve Rodsky

Hmm. 

Greg McKeown

And I just think it’s the most fascinating thing. I mean, I’m not asking them to come up with their why on the spot. I’m asking them to read what’s on their paper?

Eve Rodsky     

This is everything, it is everything. It is everything what you’re saying. We are not trained to go to our why, and it is the most impactful tool in human communication.

Greg McKeown   

I’m curious why you think it is that people don’t share the why?

Eve Rodsky     

That’s a great question what I think, Greg and this gets back to what we want to teach our kids during a pandemic, how our executive function how we complete a task from start to finish, and also how we communicate, but that’s actually nothing we ever learn. We literally never learn how to communicate unless you’re working with you, right? Or a family has hired me, you know, we have strange disciplines, right. But in a daily life, we are trained to ask the what, but not the why. And I remember, Greg, this was the key piece for me and Fairplay. And I love that we’re going deep, because I’m going to go deep with you here. I don’t get to talk about this a lot about when I was designing the system of Fairplay. I understood from an.  organizational management perspective, how important it was to treat our home as our most important organization. Because nobody was doing that. No one’s treating our home with any respect or rigor, right? So, I understood the power of organizational management to start to call the inefficiencies in the home. And that was the idea of watching couples, and I’ll just give you this little backstory so I can get to your answer about the Why. So, the biggest core finding a fair play was understanding that especially in hetero cisgender relationships, there are stages to organizational management. So, you think about how the mustard gotten your refrigerator. Greg right. How did the yellow French’s yellow mustard get there? Well, somebody had to know your second son Johnny likes French’s yellow mustard on his protein, otherwise he chokes, right, that’s the organizational management we call that like the conception phase. And then somebody  has to monitor that mustard for when it’s running low, and put it on a grocery list with everything else you need for the week and survey everybody else for what they need. And that’s the planning stage and then there is the actually going to the store to purchase the French’s yellow mustard. Now we need masks and gloves to do whatever but that execution phase is where the hetero cisgender men were coming in. And it’s a real problem Greg as you guys are bringing home spicy dijon and I asked you for French’s yellow and all of a sudden, we’re not talking about mustered anymore. But as we said before, right, we’re getting into a fight about accountability and trust. And so that piece of Fairplay was very easy for me to understand that to bring more Essentialism to the home, you had to own the grocery situation, own the full mustard situation from start to finish, because that’s intrinsic motivation. That’s autonomy. That’s what Apple calls it directly responsible individual. Netflix calls it the rare responsible person, they get context but not control. So that piece of Fairplay was easy for Seth and me to adopt. But what was not easy and this is why I think it’s important. Even I who works in values-based mediation and is trained for my why I skip that step when I was designing the system, I went straight to oh Seth you understand DRIs, you have DRIs in your workplace, you’re going to be the DRI for garbage. And that means you know, you put the liner back in. You can hear my tone great You see, I have a bad tone. When I talk about domestic life. You take those bins out, I don’t want to have to remind you, he understood that. But what was happening to me, I was his garbage shadow. So, when we were designing the system, I became his garbage shadow where I was stalking him over garbage. I was walking behind him, Greg in the kitchen. And he turned around and I’d be there. I was opening doors underneath the sink, so he would fall over them so that he would see where the garbage liners were. So, this goes back to your core question about if I work in values, and I understand the why and I had skipped that step. Then everyone’s going to skip that step. So, once I introduced that step into Fairplay, that you can’t go to just who does what, you have to build your deck together and talk about your why. So, I’ll tell you the difference. So, one was you own garbage that didn’t work? What worked was me sitting down with Seth, you know, early on as I was designing this Fairplay system, and then before I beta tested it, I sat down I’m with Seth and said to him, you know, I’ve never told you why I care about garbage. Why I’m your garbage shadow, why I’m stalking you over garbage. And here’s my why. My why is that even though we’ve been together a decade, you don’t know that I didn’t have a garbage can growing up. You don’t know that you knew I grew up in a single mom household you knew is hectic for me. But you don’t know what it feels like to be a seven year old child whose mother is working late, and you’re putting your brother to bed and he wants water and you try to go into your kitchen and to turn on the lights and you have cockroaches and water bugs scattering everywhere. I am seven years old again, Seth, when I see garbage, overflowing from our garbage pail, it makes me feel like I’m a latchkey kid in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. And that’s why I’m so triggered by garbage. And then Greg, he was able to say to me, I grew up in a household that had a housekeeper, I slept on domino’s pizza boxes in my fraternity. So, what happens when you so divergent over something that has to get done every day. Well, 30% of people divorce over these things. But if you could just get your why, then you can come up with as I talked about in Fairplay a minimum standard of care. So once Seth understood I cared about garbage. He said, I will take it out once a day. That’s fair. Don’t stalk me over it. And Greg, it was a miracle. It was like Moses parting the Red Sea it was the first time in my life where I didn’t have to remind Seth to do this. Garbage just started going out. And to me that’s the beauty of fairplay is customizing your defaults by starting with your why.

Greg McKeown     

I love both parts of this because it’s a duality that let’s talk first about the values piece again, I just came across an amazing story about one of the most successful rehab centers and restaurant organization. It’s called Delancey Street. It’s based in San Francisco, California. And Mimi Silbert is the founder the genius behind all of this, this is Mimi plus 1500 residents, each with an average of more than 15 felony convictions, drug addicts, criminals, all of this transformed at a 90% success rate into productive citizens. First of all, that’s unbelievable, right? It’s a near perfect record in a field that typically has, you know, sort of 4 or 5% common standard of success, okay. There’s all sorts of things she does, but listen to this quote from her. She says, and this is were talking like drug dealers, thieves, gang leaders, prostitutes, all of this and she is trying to link it all back to values. Listen, she says, quote, we talk about values all the time. Even when we’re teaching a new resident how to set the table while he’s withdrawing from crack cocaine. We don’t just start talk about knives and forks, we talk about pride. We talk about showing respect for those who will sit at this place at the table. You’re not just setting a table, you’re working as part of a team. You’re carrying your fair share of the work. You’re not letting people down. You’re becoming trustworthy. It’s values, values, values all the time.

Eve Rodsky   

I love that it sure makes me tear up, because I think it’s everything. And that’s it is such an easy way to start seeing your life in a totally different way. And I think again, this is why I love your book so much. But, you know, it sounds so easy, but it’s really hard and it requires intentional thought. And like you said, Greg, it’s ironic that when you give people the chance to give that intentional thought about what they care about, they still skip over it when they’re communicating outward.

Greg McKeown     

So, I want to like push on this idea of It being hard for a second. And the reason for that is because I’m handling a bit of an experiment right now, about every time I say that something is hard, because I’m not doing it. Or it’s hard because people don’t do it. I just stopped myself. And I say, well Is it hard? Or is it something else? That maybe it’s easy, but we just don’t do it. And we assume we don’t do it because it’s hard. I don’t know the answer to this with this issue, right here.

Eve Rodsky    

No, that is it. It is very easy. When people use Fairplay. And what I mean by use it is I like I said, I designed this card game. It’s a gamification that is very easy to use. And so, I think what you’re saying is right, I will challenge back to you and say when I say it’s hard, I mean that people report back to me that they very rarely. I’ll give you an example. I’d like to ask him one of my questions. So, the 500 men and women that I use for my original data set Greg was, tell me about the vows you recited on your wedding day. And how do you live them on a daily basis, everybody, besides people who maybe were married two weeks before, had literally no idea what I was talking about. So, what I said to them is that, you know, you spent so much time talking about your vows, you know, in sickness and in health. I’ll be there for you to watch the last episode of The Bachelor. But what if I’m just asking you to take a new vow, and it’s really the easiest vow ever be able to take and that is to sit down for literally 30 minutes and just start connecting over the things that have to get done every day. By starting with your Why. It means you’re going to have a conversation about garbage, about why you care about it or why you don’t, but when you can get to those agreements, that minimum standard of care for your family, and that’s what the hundred Fairplay cards help you do. Not only do you agree on your minimum standard and who does what you can customize your defaults. But the beauty is you can throw things out. And this is where I think Fairplay and Essentialism merge, because it’s about understanding that it’s really why you do what you do.   So, I’ll give you an example a story of one couple who said to me, we have no idea why we send holiday cards. We literally have no idea why we send holiday cards, because of  Fairplay. And we looked at what we valued together, there were two things we decided to take out of our deck. And that was thank you notes, and holiday cards. So now what we do for birthday gifts for our kids, we take a picture of our kid playing with the toy, and we text it out and say thank you, and we decide but we’re not going to handwrite and stamp a note because it’s just it’s hard. We’re fighting over who’s going to do it. And then they said that they got rid of holiday cards because they have no idea why they send them. Most people just look at it once and then throw it in the trash. Some people do care about that, but it was that they were able to decide and Stop in their tracks. And it did not take long. It just took a 30-minute conversation that they were going to take two things off their plate that actually weren’t valuable to them. 

Greg McKeown  

Sure. 

Eve Rodsky  

And so, I will say exactly what you say. And the things that feel hard are actually really easy. If you take the, you know, invest in your relationships, like you’re investing in toilet paper.

Greg McKeown   

Yeah, I love this. And just for one second more, I want to say how in your experience of getting people to talk about the whys in these highly complex, highly sensitive situations. What tips have you found for being able to remember to talk about why or to make talking about the why step by step process or to make it easier? Because when I hear these stories, I think, yes, that’s a powerful story. Of course, it’s powerful to say the way when I hear people actually redo their roleplay and include the why It significantly changes the experience. 

Eve Rodsky  

Yeah. 

Greg McKeown

So, if we could do this if we could make it easy, how would you break it down so that I can get this right in a really easy way? In my life?

Eve Rodsky     

It’s the simplest thing. It’s just a practice. That’s it one step. It’s thinking about communication as a practice, because so many people and this is the boiling over. Right, we’re very avoidant, especially about things in the home. So, then all of a sudden, when we’re going to have a conversation, we’re actually really scared of that conversation. And this doesn’t just come from me, Greg, this comes from, you know, TechStars and all these entrepreneurs, I look at all of you know, sort of the communication tools that they’re using and the materials that they have for their entrepreneurs, because my friends are part of those programs. They send them to me and obviously, I’m in continuing legal education all the time about effective communication tools. And what the science is showing what the sociology is showing is that a smaller, intentional communication experiences are better for employees than these long employee reviews at the end of the year, or at the end of six months. That doesn’t mean you know, oversharing. 

Greg McKeown

Yeah.

Eve Rodsky

Or I’m going to be sitting with you as my boss and telling you everything about my life, but it’s about those check ins, not just a global staff meeting, where you’re maybe talking at somebody, but it’s that, hey, I need you to for 10 minutes every week on Wednesdays at four, we’re going to check in about your progress. See, how are things going what they show is that the more intentional frequent communication allows employees to say things that they’re not normally doing in their reviews. So, like talking about, you know, hard issues, God forbid, like sexual harassment or other things that are you know, could bring the company down. Those frequent communication with your manager allows people to be more vulnerable because they’re not so scared of speaking with you. That same type of discipline is what I found in the home. First, it starts with recognizing communication as a practice. People are so used to meditation as a practice. They’re so used to exercise as a practice. Like, I wish I could meditate once and be calm forever, Greg, I like to exercise I wish I could literally walk once and then be fit forever. But that’s not how things work. Powerful important things for you require a practice. And so to me, it’s changing. This is not hard, but it’s just changing. Like you said, it’s just flipping the script to say that if you invest in 10 minutes a night of communicating like you are with your meditation practice, or in lieu of a meditation practice, because to be honest, sitting in a dark room right now, I’m not sure is the most helpful thing because we’re already socially isolating, but invest that time instead, to say with your partner, we’re here. I will always be here for you for this check in. Even when we’re mad at each other, we will still be here to check in because it allows you to avoid conversations when emotion is high cognition is low. As a mediator, the worst piece of advice I ever heard was don’t go to bed angry. Of course, you want to go to bed angry because then when you wake up, your emotions will be lower, your cognition will be higher. You want to be having those conversations as a practice. If you can’t do nightly, do three times a week, do once a week. But it’s the idea of starting to look at communication as a practice.

Greg McKeown  

I love this idea that if you make that one shift from storing it all up for some future special occasion where it becomes really awkward and painful, and it’s an unresolved issue that finally blows up, I can see that if you make that one shift to 10 minutes. Daily check in about I think the frame that you’re giving or the boundary of it is something that has happened an unfortunate event of any kind that’s happened today. I want to address what it is on my part in it, explain why it matters so much to me. And then listen to their side of the story and then wrap it.

Eve Rodsky  

That’s it. You just said in one minute, I’ll play that for my Fairplayers because you distilled it perfectly. Now there’s the feedback sandwich that they talk about. Right. Sometimes it’s coming to the table with just saying, I really appreciate, I appreciate how you’re handling X, Y, and Z. And it may just be that one night, Seth recently, in our check in, said to me that I wasn’t meeting our minimum standard of care for homeschooling our kids.

Greg McKeown

Mmmm.

Eve Rodsky

That our minimum standard of care was that we split the day. And so, in my three hours in the morning from nine to 12, I’m supposed to be present. That’s what we said. We said we’d keep our phones charging. So, what he said he’s been adhering to that his phone stays away on silent. But he’s noticed that recently that I’ve been on my phone on mute taking conference calls, sort of directing my kids on zoom. And so, when said to to me in our check-in he said, Look, not a big deal. If you don’t care about our minimum standard of care anymore, we’ll just let our kids watch TV. But if you do care, and we do want to try to adhere to this homeschool schedule, it’s not fair if I’m off my phone for three hours, and present, and you’re sitting on these conference calls, and you’re not present. And so, I said, My bad, you’re right. Let’s go back to our minimum standard of care. I’ll keep my phone in the room. And that was it. We just went on to the next day.

Greg McKeown  

Did he say why it mattered so much to him?

Eve Rodsky  

He did say it why it mattered to him because he had said it in the beginning. So, I already knew when we first went into homeschooling, we had a discussion over the homework card, or the homeschool card. And for him, what mattered was the connection with our kids in a stressful time. He felt like if we could each give them three hours a day, because Thank God, we both have careers where we can compress everything into four or five hours a day, if we could be present for them, especially during the first three months and then we could reevaluate for summer. But being present for them, keeps them off their devices, but allows us to connect with them during the day. And then we can get really undivided time. Because then we’re off duty. So, his why was this idea of can we connect with our kids during the day during a time where their entire life has been thrown off track. And we can be part of their experience as opposed to them just sitting vacant on a zoom call.

Greg McKeown  

I love what you’re describing here. Let me just ask another question that you raised in the book a really interesting at the very heart of the matter issue. And this is the principle that all time is created equal. Can you expound on that help us to understand that so that we can better live that reality out in our relationships?

Eve Rodsky     

Thank you for again, letting me go deep. This is my favorite podcast, Back to the presenting problems, not the real problem. 

Greg McKeown

Yeah. 

Eve Rodsky  

So while the details were creating the biggest problems and people are divorcing ever them, like I said about the beard shavings lady. 

Greg McKeown

Yeah.

Eve Rodsky  

The core finding of Fairplay is really this societal view of how we look at women and men’s time. So, I talked about in Fairplay that we as a society, we view men’s time as finite, like diamonds, and we view women’s time as infinite like sand. And we know this from a workplace perspective, because you know, women and if you’re a woman of color, right, you’re making 60 cents on the dollar for the same job for the same amount of time. If women enter a male profession, the salaries are automatically go down. But I guess what I wasn’t expecting so much. Greg was this premise on the home front where it was actually women, women regarding men’s time in a way that I found really interesting and men were treating women’s time is infinite in a way that I found really interesting. When women say things to me like I can never talk to my husband about my home life. It’s better for me just to do it. In the time it takes me to tell him what to do, I might as well do it myself. According to Dan Ariely, my good friend, the worst argument for a woman you could ever make, right? Of course, it makes sense, Greg, for us to sit down and tell you what to do or involve you invite you into the home, because otherwise women are doing it. We are the default for all the unpaid labor in the home. And that leads to terrible resentment. And it’s not helpful for men either. The number one thing men told me they hated about home life, was that they couldn’t get anything, right. Being criticized for trying to do things their way. And that’s just terrible to me. The other thing that instead they hated was nagging the random assignment of a task. So many men were given control and no context. That’s how it sort of manifests for women, this idea that I’m going to guard my husband’s time and I’ll just do it myself, or this excuse that women give themselves that we’re better multitaskers that somehow my executive function, Greg, is better than your executive function. So, when I go to the neuroscientist about that I asked one amazing neuroscientist, if he believes women are better multitaskers or better wired to do unpaid labor care. That was the only other day I cried. Other than the blueberries day that I talked about in the beginning, which was a day that this old neuroscientist said to me. Imagine Eve that we he’s talking about men convince you, the other half the population, that you’re better at doing dishes, how great for my half of the population. And I cried that day, Greg, because I had been sold this bill of goods that to have it all means to do it all. And it really wasn’t fair for my relationship because it was cracking under that stress. And so I think when we can view time, is understanding that women and men should get the same amount of time choice over how we use our day, which means that as I would say to Seth, I shouldn’t have to spend the last 12 minutes of my day in service of our household where you get four hours to decompress after our kids go to bed to watch Sportscenter, finish a PowerPoint deck and work out. That’s unfair. Both of our time is diamonds and we should make sure we both treat each other that way things started to change in our relationship.

Greg McKeown     

What you’re saying is that underneath the surface irritants, in many relationships is really an actually different way of seeing time. That there’s that there’s men’s time and there’s women’s time. And that you think, well, somehow, strangely, we think the women’s time there’s no end to it. 

Eve Rodsky  

Right.

Greg McKeown  

There’s no stop to it.

Eve Rodsky  

Correct. 

Greg McKeown  

Something that and I have done is to create a done for the day list.

Eve Rodsky     

I love that.

Greg McKeown     

And to try and say okay, once we’ve done these things, we’re done with the work portion of our day. And the test of the list when we’ve made it, and we don’t make it every day, but when we make it, it’s a list that we say, Would I be satisfied when these things are done? And with our children, you know, on a Saturday for example, in fact, this last Saturday, we did do it, we did a done for the day list. And it was good for all of us to say, okay, at five o’clock, we’re going to be eating dinner together. And okay, so it was a Saturday. So, we said, okay, we’re going to order in, I think we did pizza together. We’re going to watch this movie together. And we had that plan and of Anna wrote up on a whiteboard. And we all have that little family discussion. So, we all knew when the day ends, and we all knew what we were going to do after the work day it ended. And that is so important because I recognized not just with Anna that I see time a certain way, but I can see it that way with my own children. And it is a never-ending list. You can just keep on working, keep on doing things keep on asking for things and there’s they have no sense of when the day will end. They have no control over when the day ends. So that’s a pretty frustrating mode to be in.

Eve Rodsky   

This one couple who pre and post fairplay. It was such a beautiful analogy, Greg because he said pre fairplay right pre understanding that all time is created equal. He said that he looked at his time as a plate. And when his plate got full, he stopped taking things on his plate. And his wife said to me, he looked at her time as a conveyor belt, where his plate got full, but there are things coming down that conveyor belt and the only reason he could stop taking things on his plate was because she was the conveyor belt, sweeping everything else up. So, you can’t have a conveyor belt and a plate. You have to have two plates.

Greg McKeown   

Sometimes I think people can struggle with this. And I think it can be men and women but you know, you framed it as gender difference that I think women can start times struggled themselves to say, Well, I can have a stopping point, I can go, alright, no more, you know, work out there work, I’m going to stop now. And I’m going to have time to relax and to recuperate. And using the Essentiallist language, to protect the assets,

Eve Rodsky     

Protect the asset 100%. And this is also again, because, and this is a gendered issue, but this comes up in the opposite way. Sometimes it comes up with same sex couples in mydata set because we have hetero normative thinking a lot in our culture. So, I talk a lot to women about their own consciousness raising, right? Because if you’re going to say, Oh, you know, my husband could never do this. I would never ask him to do that from a male perspective, right? When I interviewed men, they said, How sad is this, that all that my partner doesn’t think they can come to me to say that they’re overwhelmed, or that all you know, they believe all these things have to get done, but I’m not contributing. Or I don’t value them. So that’s why ultimately this all goes back to values, Greg, because one of the things that men said to me what I call a toxic time message was this idea that my wife does all these unnecessary things. And so, it was a very interesting perspective. I would ask them and I say, well, let’s go into the Fairplay cards. What’s unnecessary laundry? Nope, got to get that done garbage?? Yeah, that has to go out homework for the kids know that has to get done. It was always usually spirituality, or thank you notes, when they were looking at the things that they thought were not essential. And so fine. So, if you don’t think that spirituality taking the kids to church is essential, then leave that to the person who values it. But I still want men and women to come to the table to build their deck together. They can use the Fairplay tool, which is the hundred cards that represent everything you have to do to run a home and family or you could do it yourself. But it’s an idea that you have to come to an understanding of what you both value first. 

Greg McKeown

Yes. 

Eve Rodsky

Before you can go off in the world and become a conveyor belt or plate, or you know, argue over when I can stop my work, and why am I not stopping? Because this has to get done. Sometimes it doesn’t have to get done. I say to a lot of women, why is it that you’re spending an hour on this Pinterest lunch for your kids, that they’re just gonna gobble down or throw out? Why are you spending an hour making dinosaur quinoa white pancakes? Like, can’t your minimum standard of care just be a peanut butter sandwich and an apple? And so sometimes it takes understanding why do we do what we do?

Greg McKeown     

And this idea of sort of minimum standard of care? I don’t think the argument is that you don’t care. But that you say, look, let’s not just add on layers and layers of expectation and complexity, that might not even be valued.

Eve Rodsky     

Correct. That’s it.

Greg McKeown     

One of the principles I subscribe to, or practices is the reverse pilot. Look, where you say a pilot is, okay, I’m going to try this new thing out, see how it goes. But a reverse pilot is let’s not do this and see who cares. see what we lose. And you might find that there are things that you lose. I mean, for us when, whenever we’ve had a time when we do a lot of bringing in food from the outside, we actually do think we lose something. There’s something about making food and sitting down to eat together and clearing it all up together that is a meaningful ritual for us. And that gets a bit disrupted when you just bring the food in. That’s our signature experience. I’m not telling anyone else what to do.

Eve Rodsky     

But that’s right. That’s so beautiful. I love your reverse pilot, because that’s what I say is like, try taking cards out of your deck. The people that were reporting the most perceived fairness, Greg when I asked them do both people perceive in a relationship that feels fair, correlated to people who are playing with less Fair play cards. People who had already value taking things off of their deck together, like no holiday cards, or no thank you notes, you know, hosting once a month, as opposed to every single day of the weekend, those couples were more likely to perceive that their relationship felt fair to both of them. 

Greg McKeown

Hmm. 

Eve Rodsky

And that makes sense, obviously, right? Because there’s less to do. But I had one great couple who said to me them, they talked about the magical being card, because the man in the relationship This is a heterosis gender relationship. He wanted to become the tooth fairy. But he said, you know, to him this idea of having a tooth fairy come sprinkle fairy dust, and glitter and why does it have to be so elaborate in the stamps? And you know, he’s like, I just want to put $1 under the pillow like, that’s what happened to me. And what is the minimum standard of care if I took over being the tooth fairy? I love that type of conversation because when a man came to me and said, we had a minimum standard of care conversation over the magical beings card. I said to him, I bet you know one’s ever used that sentence in English language before.

Greg McKeown     

Well, one of the things I love about this is just again, removing layers of expectation. One of the things as Anna and I went through Fairplay in the game, at the heart of it, that I thought was challenging and frankly, I don’t feel like we ever got fully there with it was that there just were so many things. So, we felt like we’ve already simplified lots of things in our life, you know, because Essentialist and all that. Nevertheless, when we actually laid it all out, the expectations were still beyond what we could do. It did remove quite a few things. But I also think that another way we could make more progress is to look at each item and say, how can we minimize this further? If we think it says I like the example of the thank you text with the photo instead of the full write it out process because the full write it out process and I’m not knocking anyone who can achieve it. But it’s not one step. It’s 20. Of course, I suppose there are some people that are really good at this and they’ve simplified it to only a couple of steps by having the cards on hand and the stamps on hand that everything’s there, but I know with our children, okay, someone goes and gets the card. Okay, you’ve got to remind them to do it. No, we do it right now you don’t play with it till you do it right now. But this this every interaction is still a step in the process of making this thing happen. If you can find an easier, simpler, single step solution to an item on the list on these hundred cards, then you significantly increase the chance of actually feeling like yes, I can own these things. This is realistic to me.

Eve Rodsky     

Because, you know, again, it’s it’s allowing you to get to that minimum standard of care where we’re before. So many people were using this gendered language of, well, if a man doing it, you have to lower your standards. And if it’s a woman doing it, you have to raise your standards. I don’t really I don’t like that, that that dichotomy? I think that when you have intrinsic motivation with autonomy, as long as there’s a minimum standard of care, then you have to do it in your own way. And what I said to Seth is, if you’re willing to own extracurricular sports, the full conception planning execution, not just showing up the literally field, but getting the damn cleats and xeroxing the birth certificates, and organizing, you know, carpool, you’re owning that card, I get six hours of my week back for you taking the full ownership of that card, but you do it with a minimum standard of care. The only minimum standard of care I care about is that the kids get to their games and their practices and that they’re wearing protective gear. I don’t care if they have dirty clothes. I don’t care if they have sunscreen on. But as long as they’re making it on time, and they’re wearing protective gear, handle extracurricular sports like the way you want to. And for Steph having that autonomy, it felt really good for him. And then he got our kids into leagues I never would have known about. And he really enjoys being part of that extracurricular process for them. So, it’s not like it’s just bad for men, inviting him into the home that way to show him the full process of what it took just gave him more ownership.

Greg McKeown     

Well, and that’s something I remember having a conversation with with Anna about this one time, it was about taking the rubbish out, right. And this is age old thing and that was on my list to do that. They would come to pick up the trash once a week, and it was always early in the morning. And it was not unusual that I would forget. And it was also not unusual that Anna would remind me maybe the day before and then remind me the morning of, you know, the morning of I’d be running out doing it. And I finally realized that I needed to own it completely. And that was literally the conversation we had. So, it’s full circle to what you’re saying. You just said, Anna I need you to literally never ever asked me about this again, ever. I said, I have got to own it. If it doesn’t go out, I’ve got to own that problem. I’ve got to then go find a way of taking it to the dump and dealing with, like, I want to own this. And as long as you remind me, I’ll know. I don’t really own it, you own it. And I’m just the person that actually physically moves it.

Eve Rodsky   

I just teared up a little because I feel very emotional. Because if that understanding happens to every single man in America, Greg, then my work will be done. That’s it. That realization is it. That is that is the core tenant of Fairplay, because what you said that’s so beautiful, is the carrying through of your mistake. And I just want to tell you one quick story about that. And then we can you know, I know I’ve been talking your ear off but this one story of this man that does another tooth fairy story ironically, of another couple where the husband took magical beings, the tooth fairy card, and he forgets. So, this is pre and post Fairplay. So pre Fairplay. He says he would have blamed his wife for not reminding him to put the money under the pillow. He said post Fairplay, just like you said, Greg, he realized that he said he would own tooth fairy. He forgot to put the money under the pillow he totally forgot. So instead of his wife blowing up at him and saying, you’re terrible, I’ll never let you do anything. She understood the tenants of Fairplay, which is that you have to carry through your mistake. So, what he tells me he does is he emails [email protected] to come last night, someone who responds by the way. She responds and says sorry that I didn’t make it there last night I’m backlogged. He shows his child the email and says the toothfairy is backlogged, she couldn’t come because she had too many teeth last night. And so, she said that if she comes a night late, you get double the money. But why that story makes me cry so much is because I still tear up at it is, you know that it wasn’t the biggest deal in the world, right Essentialism, right. It’s not the worst thing in the world of the tooth fairy doesn’t come. But it was allowing her husband to have the space to carry through his mistake. And the way he resolved it was such a beautiful touching way. That never would have happened if she stepped in to remind him.

Greg McKeown  

I love that story. And that’s a perfect note to end on. I have a practice that I just picked up recently, because I heard somebody else was doing it effectively, which is that literally no matter what happens, whatever meeting they’re in, whatever’s going on at five o’clock. It’s over. I added to this, which is that I walk out of my office, which I’m about to do right now and announce the time to the whole family that I walk out. It’s my accountability tactic. And so if I’m late, I have to announce that late if I’m minutes late, if I’m one minute late, whatever, that’s what I do. And so, it’s helping to keep me honest and helping me to be fair in my play, which is such a beautiful concept, such an important book. And Eve Rodsky you brought it to the world. Thank you so much for being with us.

Eve Rodsky    

Thank you, Greg. It’s so great talking to you today.